The 52.2 million handsets sold is at the lower end of what analysts expected and is roughly flat year over year. Regardless of good financial results, that is clearly what the financial industry calls a "slow down" in Apple's core business.
iPhone Manufacturers’ Slowing Sales Are a Bad Omen for Apple. Don't like the Slashdot headline? Then how about that bastion of conservative capitalism, Bloomberg. For your edification, "slowing sales" is commonly understood as synonymous with "slowing growth". Because everybody knows what comes next: "flat sales". Then "declining sales". Sorry I needed to spell it out for you.
You can say that Bloomberg article came out a week before the quarterlies. But they nailed the production numbers and here is the Guardian also talking about slowing sales with the quarterlies in hand. See, worry is a thing. Investors don't give a hoot how well a company just did, what they care about is where the company is going in the future. Apple's flagship product is slowing down. The quarterlies did nothing to dispel that widely held sentiment.
For me, it's been something like ten years since I last used optical media for data, 5 years since running a PC game from it. Now only use it for console games and home theatre, and I'm feeling more than a bit retro there to be honest.
Price is $1599. Not out of line if the quality is there. A bit of a surprise to see the VGA connector, but there are still a lot of VGA projectors out there for the road warriors among us. I guess, this looks like worth the money compared to the usual flimsy ultrabooks that sell for a similar price. And Apple... got an expensive one here with a display that developed white blotches all over it. Apparently common, and Apple tries to blame users. Rejected, permanently.
You would be a small minority. USB memory stick replaced DVD long ago for nearly all consumer devices, with higher capacity, higher speed and better form factor. Blu-ray will be the last gasp for optical media, and then only for old-school home theatres. When that finally peters out, optical media will be as dead as tape.
Obviously, 1G network is the most you will get on any laptop. 10 Gige remains clunky and expensive, and not needed for anything I can imagine doing with a laptop. That said, isn't it strange how 10G USB is already shipping on mid-priced desktops, but consumer Ethernet is still stuck at turn-of-the-century. What is the path forward, 10 Gige USB dongles?
Google news will not only continue to be crap, it will get a yet worse interface and Google will continue to ignore negative feedback from beta testers and users. I quit reading Google news a couple years ago and switched to bing/news. Don't miss it. Bing isn't great, but Google is terrible. At least Bing has a politics section and a less offensive user interface.
Cowabunga! This fixes the single most vexing upward compatibility issue between C and C++, and also a glaring maintainability issue in C++. How sweet that it only took, hmm, two decades to work through the initialization order wankery. Note: gcc has had this since forever, but disabled because the standard org didn't bless it.
With Linux now owning 80% of the mobile market and the 49% of the non-mobile gaming market split between PC and console, this means that Linux now dominates gaming by revenue, and even more so by units.
I'm speaking partially about the compatibility issues. I don't have time to wait for AMD to fix issues after a game releases. I gave them their last chance years ago.
I think you're imagining some disparity between AMD and NVidia. As far as I can see, they have roughly equal number of issues. Try searching for "directx issues amd" vs "directx issues nvidia". Roughly equal hits, and drilling into them shows roughly similar kinds of issues.
I run Linux, so its no contest: I like the open source AMD driver, which recently is arguably better than the binary-only driver, and better than any driver for NVidia. A simpler way to put it: fuck you NVidia.
Compared to my Nvidia 1080 they're useless for gaming
"Useless" is a wild exaggeration. More accurate: 1080 turns in 8 to 15% higher framerates at ultra-high quality. Vega overclocks better, closing the framerate gap and bumping up power consumption to considerably higher than NVidia (maybe 30% more?). Actually, since nobody really needs 100 FPS, you aren't going to notice much difference in practice. Vega handles 4K better. Vega costs twice as much because of mining, that is my only serious issue with it. Going to be hanging onto the Rx 480 for a while yet.
AMD is only 10% of the market right now, with much of that being integrated. Their fundamental architecture was just way better-suited for mining, so their prices spiked even harder than Nvidia's did.
My concrete interpretation of that is, NVidia sunk their transistor budget into tile based rasterization while AMD went for more vector FLOPS, the former being a better tradeoff for video rendering and the latter better for general purpose computing on GPU (not just mining!). Also would explain why AMD's vega/navi roadmap focuses on GPGPU for the next year or two. I suppose AMD's next GPU arch will also join the tiler party.
There was the segfault issue with early Ryzen production, requiring an RMA. Inconvenient, but AMD handled it with good style. Then there wass the soft lockup at idle issue, apparently resolved by the new "typical power" option in recent bios updates. Otherwise, Ryzen has been really sweet, including for virtualization. It is fair to say that the Ryzen introduction was a little bumpy, but the overall experience is so positive (massive parallel throughput, decent single-core, great power efficiency) that the user community is happy to cut AMD some slack. It's a bit early to say, but I think my Ryzen systems are now in that "golden uptime" zen state. I certainly had that with my Piledriver + Radeon system - uptime measured in months, typically only limited by something like a power outage or a kernel update.
Windows users never noticed either of the above Ryzen issues, it's not clear why. Maybe, they just never put their systems under enough load to get the segfault, or it's hard to distinguish those segfaults from normal life in Windows land anyway. For the idle power issue, maybe AMD quietly supplied a fix to Microsoft months ago, ahead of users noticing it. Don't know. But it's water under the bridge now, I see no compelling argument to build an Intel box now or in the foreseeable future. With the Ryzen 12nm refresh already landed and 7nm parts scheduled to sample around the same time as Intel's roughly equivalent 10nm parts, it's clear that Intel has lost its process edge to TSMC and Glofo.
Of course the real elephant in the room at the moment is Meltdown. Intel does not have a credible answer, while AMD just designed their parts right in the first place. For the moment, if you want a system that is not just one gaping security hole, plus performs decently, AMD is the only game in town.
you can fix it by pressing at one end of the key and stroking the length of the key, depressing firmly, and repeating until whatever crumb got in there disintegrates. Then the key works again.
Thank you for convincing me to never buy anything made by Apple, ever.
Slashdot Mirror
The 52.2 million handsets sold is at the lower end of what analysts expected and is roughly flat year over year. Regardless of good financial results, that is clearly what the financial industry calls a "slow down" in Apple's core business.
iPhone Manufacturers’ Slowing Sales Are a Bad Omen for Apple. Don't like the Slashdot headline? Then how about that bastion of conservative capitalism, Bloomberg. For your edification, "slowing sales" is commonly understood as synonymous with "slowing growth". Because everybody knows what comes next: "flat sales". Then "declining sales". Sorry I needed to spell it out for you.
You can say that Bloomberg article came out a week before the quarterlies. But they nailed the production numbers and here is the Guardian also talking about slowing sales with the quarterlies in hand. See, worry is a thing. Investors don't give a hoot how well a company just did, what they care about is where the company is going in the future. Apple's flagship product is slowing down. The quarterlies did nothing to dispel that widely held sentiment.
For me, it's been something like ten years since I last used optical media for data, 5 years since running a PC game from it. Now only use it for console games and home theatre, and I'm feeling more than a bit retro there to be honest.
Is Russia making laptops now?
The 44 W/hr battery seems adequate for this form factor, since the i3 is not exactly a fire breathing beast.
Price is $1599. Not out of line if the quality is there. A bit of a surprise to see the VGA connector, but there are still a lot of VGA projectors out there for the road warriors among us. I guess, this looks like worth the money compared to the usual flimsy ultrabooks that sell for a similar price. And Apple... got an expensive one here with a display that developed white blotches all over it. Apparently common, and Apple tries to blame users. Rejected, permanently.
I want a laptop with a DVD drive
You would be a small minority. USB memory stick replaced DVD long ago for nearly all consumer devices, with higher capacity, higher speed and better form factor. Blu-ray will be the last gasp for optical media, and then only for old-school home theatres. When that finally peters out, optical media will be as dead as tape.
Obviously, 1G network is the most you will get on any laptop. 10 Gige remains clunky and expensive, and not needed for anything I can imagine doing with a laptop. That said, isn't it strange how 10G USB is already shipping on mid-priced desktops, but consumer Ethernet is still stuck at turn-of-the-century. What is the path forward, 10 Gige USB dongles?
"Half the noise of a truck driving past a house." In other words, godawful noisy.
Google news will not only continue to be crap, it will get a yet worse interface and Google will continue to ignore negative feedback from beta testers and users. I quit reading Google news a couple years ago and switched to bing/news. Don't miss it. Bing isn't great, but Google is terrible. At least Bing has a politics section and a less offensive user interface.
I'm getting the feeling... ...that you are not a practising c++ dev.
Comprehension comes from reading.
Cowabunga! This fixes the single most vexing upward compatibility issue between C and C++, and also a glaring maintainability issue in C++. How sweet that it only took, hmm, two decades to work through the initialization order wankery. Note: gcc has had this since forever, but disabled because the standard org didn't bless it.
To be precise, Android dominates IOS in total game installs, and is well on its way to dominating IOS in total revenue.
With Linux now owning 80% of the mobile market and the 49% of the non-mobile gaming market split between PC and console, this means that Linux now dominates gaming by revenue, and even more so by units.
I'm speaking partially about the compatibility issues. I don't have time to wait for AMD to fix issues after a game releases. I gave them their last chance years ago.
I think you're imagining some disparity between AMD and NVidia. As far as I can see, they have roughly equal number of issues. Try searching for "directx issues amd" vs "directx issues nvidia". Roughly equal hits, and drilling into them shows roughly similar kinds of issues.
I run Linux, so its no contest: I like the open source AMD driver, which recently is arguably better than the binary-only driver, and better than any driver for NVidia. A simpler way to put it: fuck you NVidia.
You mean, sorting an array in O(N**2) time is trivial.
Compared to my Nvidia 1080 they're useless for gaming
"Useless" is a wild exaggeration. More accurate: 1080 turns in 8 to 15% higher framerates at ultra-high quality. Vega overclocks better, closing the framerate gap and bumping up power consumption to considerably higher than NVidia (maybe 30% more?). Actually, since nobody really needs 100 FPS, you aren't going to notice much difference in practice. Vega handles 4K better. Vega costs twice as much because of mining, that is my only serious issue with it. Going to be hanging onto the Rx 480 for a while yet.
AMD is only 10% of the market right now, with much of that being integrated. Their fundamental architecture was just way better-suited for mining, so their prices spiked even harder than Nvidia's did.
My concrete interpretation of that is, NVidia sunk their transistor budget into tile based rasterization while AMD went for more vector FLOPS, the former being a better tradeoff for video rendering and the latter better for general purpose computing on GPU (not just mining!). Also would explain why AMD's vega/navi roadmap focuses on GPGPU for the next year or two. I suppose AMD's next GPU arch will also join the tiler party.
Recent image of Bill Gates. Undeniable... looks older than his years. Something eating him out from inside?
Ah, and Intel seems to be way behind AMD in multi-die tech. Strategic blunder.
That, and trying to work EUV into the mix, really nasty stuff. Without EUV, multipatterning is a serious bottleneck.
if you are going to do a bitch'n build and not break the bank the 2700X seems to be the way to go.
If quiet is your thing, the 2700 is also a great choice. 65 watt envelope and even better value.
There was the segfault issue with early Ryzen production, requiring an RMA. Inconvenient, but AMD handled it with good style. Then there wass the soft lockup at idle issue, apparently resolved by the new "typical power" option in recent bios updates. Otherwise, Ryzen has been really sweet, including for virtualization. It is fair to say that the Ryzen introduction was a little bumpy, but the overall experience is so positive (massive parallel throughput, decent single-core, great power efficiency) that the user community is happy to cut AMD some slack. It's a bit early to say, but I think my Ryzen systems are now in that "golden uptime" zen state. I certainly had that with my Piledriver + Radeon system - uptime measured in months, typically only limited by something like a power outage or a kernel update.
Windows users never noticed either of the above Ryzen issues, it's not clear why. Maybe, they just never put their systems under enough load to get the segfault, or it's hard to distinguish those segfaults from normal life in Windows land anyway. For the idle power issue, maybe AMD quietly supplied a fix to Microsoft months ago, ahead of users noticing it. Don't know. But it's water under the bridge now, I see no compelling argument to build an Intel box now or in the foreseeable future. With the Ryzen 12nm refresh already landed and 7nm parts scheduled to sample around the same time as Intel's roughly equivalent 10nm parts, it's clear that Intel has lost its process edge to TSMC and Glofo.
Of course the real elephant in the room at the moment is Meltdown. Intel does not have a credible answer, while AMD just designed their parts right in the first place. For the moment, if you want a system that is not just one gaping security hole, plus performs decently, AMD is the only game in town.
you can fix it by pressing at one end of the key and stroking the length of the key, depressing firmly, and repeating until whatever crumb got in there disintegrates. Then the key works again.
Thank you for convincing me to never buy anything made by Apple, ever.